alara_r

After reading an article on Mary Sues by carmarthen, I headed on over to marysues to check it out. And then I read "150 Years of Mary Sue" by Pat Pflieger. And I'm getting disturbed.

In carmarthen's article on Mary Sues, cortese pointed out that male power fantasies have always been with us, and that the denigration of female power fantasies strikes her as sexist. I refuted her (with Wesley Crusher), but now I'm beginning to wonder. Because it looks to me like people are utilizing multiple definitions of Mary Sue, and by at least one of them, "any strong female heroine with an interesting life" qualifies. This is upsettingly sexist, especially to a person who hopes to make a living writing strong male *and* female heroes with interesting lives.

See, as I see it, there are multiple competing definitions of Mary Sue, and if you let them overlap too much, everything except stories about Joe the guy down the street are going to qualify.

- Mary Sue is a self-insert. Anytime you put yourself into a story, or adopt as a pseudonym the name you gave a character in a story, she is Mary Sue. (By this logic, Marrissa Picard, heroine of Stephen Ratliff's infamous Marrissa series, is not a Mary Sue, as she is a 12-year-old girl and Stephen wrote her when he was a college-age male. By the same logic, a brief walk-on cameo in which you appear for half a page in a 98 page novel is a Mary Sue.)

- Mary Sue is improbably attractive and talented. (marysues seems to be using this definition, classifying a number of canonical heroes or heroines as Mary Sues/Marty Stus on the grounds that they are attractive, talented, heroic, and have complicated lives.)

- Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic. (Any original female character.)

- Mary Sue is an original character who overshadows the canonical cast.

To me, the *only* useful definition of Mary Sue, given its derogatory elements, is the last one.

A self-insert? We all insert aspects of ourselves into our characters, or we'd be lousy writers. And hysteria against self-inserts tends to produce the overblown disclaimers "So and so doesn't look anything like me! And I don't act like that!" while meanwhile overlooking obvious Mary Sues like Marrissa Picard.

Improbably attractive and talented with a complicated life? Isn't that part of the definition of being a fantasy/sf hero? I mean, practically every woman John Crichton meets wants to sleep with him, he's a test pilot *and* a physicist, he saves the day in practically every episode, and he goes from being an ordinary Joe human guy trapped in a civilization vastly more advanced than Earth's to being Most Wanted Outlaw #1, leader of a ragtag band, and the guy who holds the key to the salvation or destruction of the universe. If you're going to tell me that he's a Mary Sue, then please go read boring arty stories about the lives of boring arty ordinary people. Heroes in sf/fantasy are larger than life. That's the *point.*

Claiming that all original female characters in fic are Mary Sues is a destructive meme that has clobbered many women's abilities to write interesting female characters. It's also sexist.

The useful definition of Mary Sue, in my eyes, is "original character who overshadows the canonical cast." A character may be more powerful than the canon cast without problems if this is done realistically (you can, for instance, create a Marvel character who's the daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey who's a reality warper. In fact you almost have to.) However, unrealistically powerful/talented characters tend to warp the canon cast out of character. For instance, in "Kid Dynamo", the fact that a new girl who's a godawfully powerful telekinetic and Magneto's daughter doesn't warp the cast out of recognition; the New Mutants continue to have their personal lives, they have interactions that have nothing to do with the new girl, and she pretty much never singlehandedly saves the day. However, in the Mary Sue "Enigma," which was inspired by Kid Dynamo, the heroine ends up performing *all* the actions that save the rest of the cast. Despite the fact that, you know, they're heroes, and pretty tough, and adept at saving themselves, they stand around and let the original heroine do all the work.

It can be an enjoyable pleasure to read about a good original character. It is not a pleasure at all to read a story where your favorite characters are out of character. *This* is why Mary Sue is bad. Not because she's a twink (an ultra-powerful character); whether or not a twink is enjoyable to read about depends on the universe and the writing (fans of The Authority will have to own up to liking twinks because *everyone* in that comic is a twink.) Not because she's a self-insert-- who cares if you're putting yourself in a story, if you do it *well?* But because she warps the rest of the cast out of character.

Now, it is possible, albeit difficult, to achieve this effect if you're creating an original work and a canon hero/heroine. In this case, you must warp the laws of human nature. If a character is loved and adored, improbably, by *everyone* in the plot, and you make the mistake of telling us so without showing us why, then yes, your original hero/heroine may well have some strong Mary Sueish elements. You can also create an entire Mary Sue species by not being balanced in the way you hand out the superpowers (my favorite example of this is the Sleepless in Nancy Kress' "Beggars" novels, where being genetically engineered to not need sleep turns out to create hard-headed, practical, superintelligent, creative, IMMORTAL people. Huh? However, other examples include the Wraeththu from Storm Constantine's "Enchantments" series, and if the Newcomers from Alien Nation and the Vulcans from Star Trek are not Mary Sue species it's only because we've seen so many examples of bone-headed ones.) But this is not a true Mary Sue, and you need to identify your problems correctly. The problem with Anita Blake is not that she is a powerful reanimator, tough fighter and attractive woman. The problem is that everyone she meets lusts after her. Ditto James Bond, who *needs* to be an improbably competent secret agent to work, but why does every single woman he meets fall into bed with him?

It's also possible to achieve this effect by writing a canon hero/heroine. Examples of this include many Gambit fics where Gambit single-handedly saves all of the X-Men, over an extended plot, coming up with every plan and winning every battle that the characters enter into, and the Christine the Vampire Slayer series by Djinn I recently reviewed. Here, in order to make your main character look good you are distorting all the other characters in the plot, weakening them. This is still not true Mary Sueism, though.

A hero achieving many great things over the course of a series is not bad and is not Mary Sue. It's what heroes *do*. Having a dark and/or complicated past is not a bad thing by itself. The problem arises only when, in fanfic, you distort the canon characters out of recognition by introducing a new character, or modifying a canon character, or, to a certain extent, deforming the laws of human nature in writing people's reactions to an original hero. It should not be a put-down for female heroes (or even male ones who are improbably competent.) It should not be wholly focused on self-insertion or ridiculous names. It should not be used as an excuse to not write women in fanfic. Otherwise the term starts to get watered down, and a serious level of sexism creeps in.